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Arganese Cigar Tour – Santiago, Dominican Republic
By Jesse | March 12, 2008
This fantastic entry comes from Rhonda Taormina from Cigar Live. She’s one a 5-Pack of Camacho Cigars and Hat along with being entered to win Grand Prize of a box of Camacho 10th Anniversary Cigars. See our Anniversary Bash Contest Page for details on how to enter.
![clip_image002[3]](http://www.cigarjack.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/clip-image0023.jpg)
Every once in a while an opportunity comes along that you just can’t pass up. My husband and I had that opportunity in January of this year. We are both somewhat new cigar smokers and have become very interested in the actual hobby of smoking, collecting and trying various cigars not to mention the history and process of creating cigars. In our constant quest for gaining more knowledge about our hobby, we were offered a trip to visit the Arganese Cigar factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic through a cigar forum we both belong to. With our passports in hand and a few days of vacation, we eagerly signed up for this trip. Well, we quickly realized that our trip was going to be more of an experience, due to the amount of things we would see.
We landed in the Dominican Republic and were personally greeted by Gene Arganese, president of Arganese Cigars and Cristobal Vasquez, VP of Operations for Arganese Dominicana, S.A. There were six of us on this trip including my husband and me. We were driven to Gene’s home in Santiago where we would all be staying for the duration of the trip. The three story stucco house sat at the end of a cul de sac and was most accommodating for house guests. It was very spacious with a comfortable breeze blowing through all the open windows. There was a gathering room on each floor, a spacious balcony on the third floor overlooking the swimming pool and marble floors throughout. The guest rooms were all furnished with two double beds, a dresser, armoire and private bath. Gene also has a full time chef who prepared all of our meals.
We spent the first night on the back patio by the poolside relaxing from our plane trip and getting to know more about our host and group members while sampling the Arganese line of cigars. Gene didn’t waste anytime in introducing us to his upcoming cigars which are scheduled to be released at this year’s IPCPR (formerly RTDA) event.
For our first full day, we were originally going to spend part of the day visiting the tobacco fields and then proceed to one of the factories. However, this particular day was a Dominican holiday honoring Our Lady of Altagracia so the factory was going to be empty. Therefore, we set off with a picnic lunch of sandwiches to check out a couple of the tobacco fields.
After a 45 minute ride through the countryside, we arrived at our destination. The first field we visited was devoted strictly for growing wrapper leaves. We were taken through an onsite greenhouse where baby tobacco plants are nurtured before being transplanted into the fields. Gene and Cristobal explained the growing process and how the plants are routinely inspected by hand. The tobacco plant grows one inch per day and in this particular field the plants were 5 to 6 feet tall. Skilled workers will remove any undesirable leaves, which promotes health and growth for the premium leaves.
We then walked over to one of the drying barns. Arganese Cigars utilize “Cuban” style barns instead of “Dominican” style barns. Cuban barns have walls on all four sides as opposed to Dominican barns which don’t have walls. They are open, just a roof without sides. The airflow can be more controlled with this Cuban type of barn as it’s equipped with tarps which can be adjusted at will for the desired effect. We were also fortunate enough to experience how freshly harvested tobacco leaves are paired and tied to undergo the airing out process. One of the Arganese field supervisors demonstrated that process for us by tying pairs of tobacco leaves onto bamboo poles. These poles are then hung on the proper level to begin their drying process. They are continually rotated from higher to lower levels to get the desired effect as the heat builds and the moisture evaporates from level to level. During peak harvest time, the barn will be full of these paired leaves in their various stages of the drying process.
Paired tobacco leaves are hung to dry in the barn.
The second field we visited had tobacco plants being grown for the filler and binder leaves. This field was a bit younger as the plants were three to four feet tall. Again in this field, workers constantly scan the plants and remove any undesirable aspects (bad leaves and/or blooms). The blooms are plucked by hand from the plant as soon as they emerge. This is done so the flowering bloom doesn’t derive any nutrients or productivity away from the leaf since the leaf is the only part of the tobacco plant that is of any benefit to the grower and manufacturer.
On our second full day, we headed to the factories. We first went to the sorting facility where all the leaves are sorted/graded and bundled into burlap bales. If I remember correctly, each bale has 100 lbs of tobacco leaf, which can make 10,000 cigars.
We then toured the box factory which builds boxes for many different manufacturers. Arganese Cigars uses stained and varnished boxes on some of their lines and gold foiled paper labels on boxes for their other lines.
The box factory near the main Arganese facility.
The Arganese main plant is located in Tamboril, Dominican Republic. The tobacco leaves are sorted and fermented and resorted and graded and sorted again. In the blending room, tobacco leaves are gathered and weighed for each specific blend then bagged up for the rollers. Arganese has many quality control checks in place to insure that their product is the best it can be. Supervisors continually walk the floor checking the proper aspects.
Binders and rollers worked in teams of two to create each cigar. Walking through the floor, where the rollers were steadily working, was an amazing site. Throughout the entire trip, we quickly realized just how labor intense cigar production is. It’s a well known fact that the tobacco leaf travels through many hands en route to the consumer, but to actually see the process first hand really drove home that realization. The various sites, and smells, was a journey like none other. Each roller was working on a different line of cigar. Arganese offers a Connecticut, Nicaraguan, Maduro (my favorite) and a Double Wrapped wrapper. So each roller had their specific cigar they were creating, of a specific shape or length. The Double Wrapped cigar has a Connecticut and Maduro wrapper combination skillfully rolled to resemble a barber pole. You can see the great skill and artistry that is involved in this crucial step of the process. All the cigars need to look alike and uniform or they get pulled out.
Master roller demonstrating his craft. One of two aging rooms.
From the rolling floor, the cigars will spend the next several months in the aging rooms. There were two aging rooms for the finished cigars. Everything is bundled, labeled, dated and aged which allows the tobacco blends to marry. These newly constructed aging rooms are set up with an elaborate humidification system and can store up to three million cigars where they can achieve the perfect aging process. Once the cigars have completed the aging/marrying process, the last stages of their production is the final sorting, banding and boxing. These are the final steps before the cigars are shipped to the stores and we could see the great lengths taken to make sure that the presentation of the product would be perfect. One worker sorts the cigars to insure that each box has cigars of the same consistency and color. Another worker will apply the bands, using a template to precisely place each band on the cigar. Then the banded cigars are inserted into cello wrappers and boxed. The boxes are then cleaned and polished before adding shrink wrap. Complete boxes are finally crated and ready to be shipped to the distributor, then on to the retailer (cigar shop) and then ultimately to us the cigar smoker.
Sorting, banding and boxing completes the production process.
Once we had seen the entire operation from field to freight, we all had the opportunity to blend our own cigar. We wrote out the recipe we would like and handed it off to a master roller who gathered the proper ingredients. Again, it was interesting to watch him create these personal blends right before our eyes. I listed the percentages of Secco, Vizo and Ligero leaf I preferred for the filler of my creation and used an Indonesian binder and Maduro wrapper.
Seeing first-hand the complete process of creating that one little cigar, made me appreciate just how much effort is put forth to make the end product. All the people that are involved, from the farmers to the sorters, rollers and distributors, really impressed upon me the whole chain of events that occurs and the vast work force needed. Many thanks to Gene Arganese and Arganese Cigars for all their hospitality. This trip was an experience that will stay with me forever and one that I will remember fondly each time I light up another cigar. Because I will no longer simply smoke a cigar, I will savor the cigar smoking experience.
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Tags: Arganese Cigars, Bash Entry, Cigar Live, Dominican Republic
Topics: Cigar Talk |
March 12th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Bravo! It was like re-living the experience.
March 12th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Sounds like an incredible trip. I missed the opportunity to visit a cigar factory in Cuba when I was there last year, because no one else in my group smoked cigars. It’s a mistake I’ll not make twice. If I go back, I will tour a factory.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
[…] Arganese Cigar Tour by Rhonda Taormina. […]
April 8th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Rhonda, congratulations!
Well written, visual and like Troy said - you made me feel as though I was with you!
Very deserving…Damsel!